EduBots

Trying To Keep Up! In January 2016 Europe’s reigning GO champion, Fan Hui was defeated by Deep Mind’s AlphaGo program. Based on strategy and intuitive thinking, each move of the black or white stones of the 2500-year-old game of GO leads to a possible 250 moves. Every …

Will robots take over the world? How many times have you heard this? From magazines to books, whenever we talk about robots this notion pops up. True- when Martin Ford titled his book, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, he might have expected this kind of hyperbole, but Ford had something entirely different on his mind.

Engineers from around the world visited Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan to compete in the 23rd Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) June 5-8, 2015. Started in 1993, groups that participate in IGVC are judged for the navigation and design of their unmanned vehicles.

Victor Scheinman is a pioneer in the field of robotics. In 1969, while he was a mechanical engineering student working in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL), he invented the Stanford Arm, the first all-electric, 6-axis articulated robot, which was controlled by a revolutionary minicomputer.

E D U B O T S SHAPING THE FUTURE OF ROBOTICS Burundi American International Academy Bujumbara, Burundi, Africa Central Africa’s First Robotics Program, by Don Chambers The first STEM curriculum school in Central Africa, the Burundi American International Academy, has reached a milestone to …

It was only a little more than 50 years ago that the word “robot” was relegated to science the world, lectured and educated; authored textbooks that became the standards in robotics. He cajoled, inspired, and educated more, and finally was heard. He is rightfully known as the Father of Robotics, Joseph F. Engelberger.

In Daniel Wilson’s book, Robopocalypse, Archos is the supremely intelligent sentient being unwittingly unleashed upon the world. He is self-aware, self- improving and bent on his own self-preservation and destroying humankind.

Hundreds of thousands of students in the U.S. alone are involved in competitions and robotics programs each year, in and outside the classroom, and that number has doubled in recent years as educators and students have come to understand the magic of robotics.

The Indiana Robotics Educators Program Editor’s note: in our July-August “ Grassroots Robotics” column (issue no. 11), we reported on the expansion of robotics in high schools in Indiana. You can read that article, with additional material and pictures, at www.botmag.com. In programs spearheaded over three …

College Challenges Emerge—Community Thrives The Vex Robotics Competition is one of the fastest rising competitive robotics sector around the world, and is now open to college-level students who will be attending the second annual VEX Robotics World Championship to be held at the Dallas Convention Center …

A home robot project that turned into an educational robot kit This is an account of a home robot project built from very simple components that took on a life of its own. It was initially intended to be a bulldozer – but after the people …